As one with many friends in Mexico the oligarchs have ruined that country with their corruption. They force citizens to use their products/services and don't have free competition for competitive bid projects. Not only are they adversely affected by Oil prices, but money from the US (one of their largest GDP contributors) is slowing as many of the recent immigrants work in housing which has slowed to a crawl. Their protectionism and monopolies pushed inflationary pressure on everyday items never allowing people to save up enough to get out of poverty or to create a middle class. If they didn't live next to the USA, Mexico would be Zimbabwe.
Another article... http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6252174.html It's a bit scary. I have family in Monterrey. I haven't visited since 2005.
Open up the borders. Legalize drugs. Release drug offenders out of jail. Thatd be so many extra people to account for to have real work and homes to live in. Where would the resources come from?
Not even Cancun is safe Cancun's top cop is grilled in retired general's killing Probe widens in crimefighter's assassination By DUDLEY ALTHAUS Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle Feb. 9, 2009, 11:23PM MEXICO CITY — Federal agents detained Cancun’s police chief and six other policemen Monday as an investigation deepened into the torture-murder of a retired general hired to lead a special unit targeting the resort city’s gangsters. Francisco Velasco, nicknamed the Viking, was taken into custody for questioning after scores of Mexican soldiers, backed by two armored cars, seized control of the city’s police headquarters. Velasco was flown to Mexico City, where anti-drug prosecutors were to interrogate him, officials said. The former general, Mauro Tello, 63, and two associates were abducted in Cancun and found shot to death in a pickup outside the city on Feb. 3, the day after Cancun Mayor Gregorio Sanchez presented him to the City Council as the newly hired public security adviser. Tello had been expected to set up an elite unit to fight gangsters in Cancun and eventually to take over the police department. Velasco was suspended from duty but was not immediately named a suspect in Tello’s killing or charged with the crime. Sanchez said the chief’s removal had been arranged with state and federal authorities. “They will notify us later if he is arraigned or was simply called for questioning,” Sanchez said. Army troops have moved to dismantle local police forces across Mexico when their officers were believed to have been corrupted by organized crime, the term many officials in Mexico use for the country’s drug syndicates and their confederates. Soldiers are now patrolling areas terrorized by the drug-related violence that last year killed at least 5,400 people. Troops have been deployed in several cities along the Texas border, including Ciudad Juarez and Reynosa. The army’s role in the drug fight has escalated since President Felipe Calderon ordered troops into the field against the drug gangs upon taking office in December 2006. More than 20,000 soldiers have been sent to the U.S. border and to key drug production and trafficking areas. Tello, a career army officer who retired Jan. 1, had commanded a crackdown on drug gangs for Calderon in Michoacan state in 2007. At the time, it was the scene of some of the country’s most brutal gangland violence between local gangs and gunmen from the Gulf Cartel, based in the cities bordering South Texas. Cancun’s drug trade is reportedly controlled by the Gulf Cartel and its assassins, known as the Zetas. Sounding the alarm Calling Monday for a united front against the drug gangs, Mexico’s defense minister equated the current crackdown with the early days of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. Gen. Guillermo Galvan said that if left unchallenged, organized crime’s impact on the country’s institutions would be irreversible “sooner rather than later.” “Throughout its history,” he said in a speech, “Mexico has struggled with internal threats. Organized crime today represents a serious adversary, and confronting it demands firm national unity.” The epicenter of Mexico’s tourism industry, Cancun and its nearby coastline also have long been a major transit point for South American cocaine heading for the U.S. and other markets. Local drug use has increased dramatically in Cancun, as it has throughout Mexico. Four-fifths of Cancun’s 18 million tourists last year came from Texas and other states. Millions more Americans visit the so-called Maya Riviera coastline south of the city each year. Most Cancun tourists stay at the resorts and upscale hotels in the boomerang-shaped barrier island offshore from the city, far removed from the city’s crime-plagued neighborhoods.
we gotta build that wall. i know it wont solve all issues but i think we need a physical barrier between us and mexico more than ever before
While I find the wall objectionable in several ways, it would make drug trafficking harder and help Mexico defeat the cartels.
Wouldn't that be more of an outfrastructure? Although, I like the marketing strategy you're taking there...
bulding a wall on our land (not that shiat israel is pulling off by stealing and splitting palestinian lands) is our FULL right if it means sense for our security the only people truly opposed to such a non violent solution (instead of putting our military on the border and ordering them to shoot the mofos if they come anywhere near us) seem to be people interested in keeping the illegal human flow alive for whatever political or economic purposes its not THE solution but its a major component to it and then we can reduce our human force on the ground and just use surveillance and other stuff in conjunction we already know that terrorists have used or tried to use mexico before to get into america undetected. this is a major national security issue for that also not just cause mexico is going to hell in a handbasket. i also think this physical barrier would help mexican authorities corner the drug dealers and defeat them
nonstop CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — A drug gang kidnapped and killed six people near a town in the U.S.-Mexican border region today, prompting a series of gunbattles with soldiers that left 15 others dead. The violence started when gunmen kidnapped nine alleged members of a rival drug gang in Villa Ahumada and later executed six of them along the PanAmerican highway outside of the town, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, said Enrique Torres, spokesman for a joint military-police operation in Chihuahua state. Assailants later released three of the men, although their whereabouts was not immediately known, Torres said. Soldiers later caught up with the gunmen and a series of shootouts ensued, leaving 14 alleged gunmen and one soldier dead today, Torres said. Another soldier was wounded. Mexico's has been besieged by drug violence amid a two-year government crackdown. President Felipe Calderon said Monday that more than 6,000 people have died in drug-related violence. Villa Ahumada, a town of 1,500 people, was virtually taken over by drug gangs last year when gangs killed two consecutive police chiefs, and two officers. The rest of the 20-member force resigned in fear, forcing the Mexican military to take over for months until the town was able to recruit new officers. The town's mayor, Fidel Chavez, fled to the state capital for his own safety. Also today, in the rough border city of Tijuana, city police said emergency officials responding to a report of a car on fire found a sport utility vehicle engulfed in flames and two charred bodies inside. In other violence late Monday, armed men forced their way into a Mexican prison in Torreon, then killed three prisoners by beating them and setting them on fire in a bathroom. The group of eight assailants also freed nine inmates before escaping, state prosecutors said in a statement today. Those killed were being held for kidnapping and murder and had been transferred to the prison less than two hours before the attack.
More favorable and cooperative trade relations that would make Mexico a stronger, more developed economy and diminish the incentive for drug production and trafficking?
it's time to legalize drugs... at least some. the black market for narcotics has made the drug cartels more powerful than most countries.
Reuters [rquoter] Mexico drug gangs threaten cops on radio, kill them By Lizbeth Diaz TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican drug gangs near the U.S. border are breaking into police radio frequencies to issue chilling death threats to cops which they then carry out, demoralizing security forces in a worsening drug war. "You're next, b*stard ... We're going to get you," an unidentified drug gang member said over the police radio in the city of Tijuana after naming a policeman. The man also threatened a second cop by name and played foot-stomping "narcocorrido" music, popular with drug cartels, over the airwaves. "No one can help them," an officer named Jorge said of his threatened colleagues as he heard the threats in his patrol car. Sure enough, two hours later the dead bodies of the two named policemen were found dumped on the edge of the city, their hands tied and bullet wounds in their heads. Cartels killed some 530 police in Mexico last year, some of them corrupt officers who were working for rival gangs. Others were killed in shoot-outs or murdered for working against the gangs or refusing to turn a blind eye to drug shipments. Violence has hit shocking levels in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego, since President Felipe Calderon launched an army crackdown on traffickers in late 2006, stirring up new wars between rival cartels over smuggling routes. The drug war is scaring tourists and investors away from northern Mexico, forcing some businesses to shutter just as the country heads into recession this year. Badly-paid Tijuana municipal police, often accused of collaborating with rival wings of the local Arellano Felix cartel, are badly demoralized, senior officers say. "These death threats are part of the psychological warfare that organized crime is using against officers," said Tijuana police chief Gustavo Huerta. "Before, the gangs began infiltrating the radio after a police execution, which was bad enough, but now they are doing it beforehand and the force feels terrorized," he said. WORN-OUT BODY ARMOR Officers in threadbare uniforms and worn-out body armor say they are no match for drug gangs with powerful weapons and state-of-the art technology. Some police cling to religious trinkets and pray for protection, but many others have taken early retirement. "I and many of my colleagues are thinking our time in the force is over," said Olivia Vidal, a Tijuana policewoman with 15 years in the force. "I have three kids. Two are at university. I would never let them follow in my footsteps." Drug hitmen are brazenly using pirate radio decoders to flag police murders in advance on the airwave, often playing the brassy accordion-led "narcocorrido" ballads that lionize the escapades of heavily armed, womanizing traffickers. The gangsters use the decoder to access the radio frequency and then use a transmitter linked to a CD player and a microphone to transmit the narcocorrido music and the threats. In one recent attack, hitmen killed two officers in their vehicle in Tijuana and then blasted drug ballads over police radio while naming their next targets, just as officers were reaching the first crime scene. Some gangs sarcastically offer their "condolences" over the air after an execution, broadcasting messages like: "We are so sorry." [/rquoter]
